I have a captured VHS video clip in Premiere Elements 13 that has some low-level jitters. I have tried several times to stabilize this using the "Quick" option. Each time, after a half-hour of processing, a message returns with "Stabilization Failed." My system has 32 GB RAM memory, and I shut down all desktop operations during the process. There should be no insufficient memory issues. What's going wrong here?

I will install Movie Maker 2012 and experiment with this, in response to your first question.

I will try the Detailed SS and see if it produces a different result.

Another observation: From reading the Help menu, it seems that "video stabilization" refers to shaky camera work within the clips. In my case, this is not an issue. The jitters that I am talking about are really "frame shakiness." I recorded an Ormandy/Philadelphia Orchestra Great Performances concert on PBS in 1978, using a VHS recorder. Using a different playback machine (the original recorder is NLA), with the recorded signal captured through a Canopus ADVC-300 bridge, the entire clip is somewhat "jittery" on the vertical axis. I presume that this is more related to the azimuth alignment on the playback VCR than anything else. In any case, I was hoping that the Shake Stabilizer would make corrections for this syndrome.

I tried stabilizing in Movie Maker 2012—it did nothing to stabilize the frame-shaking, and did odd things with the superimposed titles and end credits that the producers of the program added—like moving the superimposed titles around the screen, instead of where they should have been.

As far as the Detailed version (advanced) of the SS, I'm not sure of the proper settings for frame (as opposed to camera) jitters.

At the bottom of the frame, there is about a sixteenth of an inch black bar, with some white diagonal lines, that is constantly jittery. Then every once in a while, the entire video frame shifts up about a sixteenth inch for a split second, as if the camera hit a speed bump, and then settles down again.

One other anomaly: When I exit the program and start again, choosing the existing project, I get a error message: There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into drive E. The project will not load until I put a disk into the drive. Is this because one of the video clips (Project Asset) was captured from a DVD? VOB files and all that?

I renamed the OldFilm.AEX file and it did remove the No Disk error message. However, I tried another Shake Stabilization procedure on one video clip in the project (with 30 minute running time), after making precautionary actions, with the following results:

I shut down all the desktop operating programs on the computer and as many unnecessary TSR programs, such as Skype, as warranted.

I chose the Detailed SS utility and tracked the CPU and Memory processes with Task Manager during the operation.

During the stabilization process, the CPU usage varied from 55-65%. The memory throughout held at about 24 GB (out of 32 GB).

Starting the final stages of stabilization, however, the memory usage graph began climbing upwards until the SS process reached 98-99% and memory was hovering between 29-31%. Then the process crashed—the "Stabilization failed" banner flashed onto the monitor window, and a Window Error message announced that memory was low and do I want to exit the program.

It seems that this SS utility demands a high level of memory while operating, and at the final stages, when it tries to process the whole clip, it exceeds the memory capacity of the computer itself. At 32GB RAM memory, this computer is maxed out. I don't know any other motherboards that would allow enough memory chips to exceed this.

The question is, why would such a memory-intensive utility be part of a program designed for home users, most of whom do not have as much RAM as I have? Sysinfo below:

This describes one of the three clips in the project, two of which are derived from VHS tapes, and the other from a DVD.

I have only tried stabilization on the VHS tape clips. DVD captures have all been rock solid in terms of a stable picture. Trimming the bottom edge won't help very much since the unstableness affects the entire picture.

Most all of my occasion to use Premiere Elements 13.1 (and earlier versions 8 and 10) is to transfer material recorded as far back as 1979 on VHS cassettes to DVDs. Occasionally, I download HD material from YouTube and burn them to Blu-ray disks, using PE for editing purposes. I do not have a digital videocam, so I cannot testify as to the operation of the Shake Stabilizer on digitally recorded videos. Other than attempting to convert color slides into slide shows, my primary use of PE is to convert VHS tape material as content for DVD watching and preserving. I have over 1,000 VHS cassette tapes, and while most of these are movies which I have substituted with commercial DVDs or those recorded off, say, Turner Classic Movies, I still have other material recorded off TV which is not available elsewhere—plays, concerts, recitals, etc.

The VHS tapes that I am converting, as I mentioned in my previous thread, go back as far as 1979, when sale of VHS recorders was just beginning, after Sony's Betamax machines. I have had quite a number of VHS recorders—two were actually stolen in the 1980s when my former house in Ann Arbor was broken into by burglars. This being said, the tapes were recorded on different machines over a 15-20 year period—each of which had different recording characteristics.

Since the original machine cannot be determined for each tape, I am relegated to using about two current machines for playback and capture purposes. I suspect that the electronic tracking/azimuth alignment methods employed by these current machines are not entirely in sync with those of the original recorder(s). This is what is causing the instability. The Shake Stabilizer was used, unsuccessfully, to try to compensate for this. But maybe it was not designed to do this, but only for shaky camera work within a given frame, but not the entire frame itself.

It would depend upon the cost. I suppose I can live with the tapes the way they are. It's just irritating to watch a less-than-perfect picture. I also might be able to tweak whatever azimuth adjustment controls there might be on the playback recorder to minimize tracking imperfections with the playback. Anything after capture within PE 13.1 seems to be dicey.